Thousands of American troops are being poured into southern Afghanistan to break the “stalemate” in the region, the senior British commander in the country said today.
General Jim Dutton, deputy commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, denied that the British forces based in Helmand province in the south had been fighting a “losing campaign” against the Taliban.
But he acknowledged that “neither side could progress much” with the present force levels.
Eikenberry has a difficult role, trying to walk that fine line between military needs and an Afghan government widely seen as ineffective and corrupt. And in the middle of it all, he’s already been faced with a civilian casualty nightmare after U.S.. aircraft dropped as many as a dozen bombs, some weighing a ton, as they went after militants.
He visited the scene out in Farah Province with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and promised the U.S. would do more to avoid civilian casualties. But Eikenberry never got too specific — he talked about getting more intelligence to pinpoint exactly where the enemy is before dropping bombs, and making sure the Afghan forces are in the lead.
There is rising anger here about the civilian losses, from both the average Afghan citizen and senior Afghan officials, like Karzai. The Afghan leader wants an end to all bombing, and an end to night operations. American military officials say there are times when bombing might be necessary to protect U.S. and Afghan forces, and that the U.S. military “owns the night” having an edge with night vision goggles and other equipment that give them an edge over the Taliban. They say they will never end night ops.
You started out on Monday questioning why we were being so opposite of George Bush in all these questions. And on Friday I’m answering questions about why are we so much like George Bush on all these questions.
I’ll let you guys discern what period of day that all changed.
—Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s Press secretary, as quoted in this morning’s Globe and Mail
Pakistani forces battled Taliban fighters on Monday as the militants denounced the army and government as U.S. stooges and said a peace pact would end unless the government halted its offensive.
The February pact and spreading Taliban influence have raised alarm in the United States about the ability of nuclear-armed Pakistan — which has a vital role in efforts to stabilize Afghanistan — to stand up to the militants.
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Islamabad of abdicating to the Taliban while President Barack Obama expressed grave concern the government was “very fragile” and unable to deliver basic services.
Obama will present his strategy for defeating al Qaeda to Pakistan and Afghanistan leaders on Wednesday amid growing U.S. concern it is losing the Afghan war.
Some common messages emerged: Many Afghans specifically blamed Pakistan and its intelligence service, known as the ISI, for funding the Taliban insurgency; they criticized the Karzai government’s corruption; and they lauded Holbrooke’s pet project for sharply boosting aid to Afghanistan’s agricultural sector.
The Afghanistan visit was an unusual exercise in strategic listening for a superpower that during the Bush years treated communications strategy as a problem of talking more loudly. It was especially interesting to see Holbrooke in listening mode. “Give us advice on reconciliation with the Taliban,” he implored the religious leaders. “What other suggestions do you have?” he asked the tribal chiefs.
The upbeat tour was deceptive, in a way, in its suggestion that Afghanistan’s problems can be fixed by more open talk. An illustration of how hard it will be to turn the war around comes in a security map displayed in Atmar’s office. Districts where the insurgency poses a high threat are colored in red; those that are enemy controlled are black. There is an arc of nearly unbroken red and black across the southern half of the country, where more than half the population lives.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan offered a grim view Wednesday of military efforts in southern Afghanistan, warning that 17,000 new troops will take on emboldened Taliban insurgents who have “stalemated” U.S. and allied forces.
Army Gen. David McKiernan also predicted that the bolstered numbers of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan – about 55,000 in all – will remain near those levels for up to five years.
Still, McKiernan said, that is only about two-thirds of the number of troops he has requested to secure the war-torn nation.
One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
“Are you going to school?”
Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others ”” students and teachers ”” was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.
Can you imagine trying to live like this? Read it all.
FP: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that U.S. efforts in Afghanistan were really on the verge of failure. What’s your incoming assessment?
DP: I told [then] Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in September 2005 that Afghanistan would be the longest campaign in the so-called ”˜long war.’ That judgment was based on an assessment I conducted in Afghanistan on my way home from my second tour in Iraq. And having been back to Afghanistan twice in recent months, I still see it that way. Progress there will require a sustained, substantial commitment. That commitment needs to be extended to Pakistan as well, though Pakistan does have large, well-developed security institutions and its leaders are determined to employ their own forces in dealing with the significant extremist challenges that threaten their country.
FP: I was rereading an account of an Afghan veteran from Soviet operations there. After every retaliatory strike, he said, ”˜Perhaps one mujahideen was killed. The rest were innocent. The survivors hated us and lived with only one idea””revenge.’ Clearly [U.S.] engagement in Afghanistan didn’t start out in the same way as the Soviets’ did, but one of the questions is whether all these occupations wind up similarly after seven years.
DP: A number of people have pointed out the substantial differences between the character of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and that of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, especially in the circumstances that led to the respective involvement, as well as in the relative conduct, of the forces there. Foremost among the differences have been the coalition’s objectives: not just the desire to help the Afghans establish security and preclude establishment of extremist safe havens, but also to support economic development, democratic institutions, the rule of law, infrastructure, and education. To be sure, the coalition faces some of the same challenges that any of the previous forces in Afghanistan have faced: the same extreme terrain and weather, tribal elements that pride themselves on fighting, lack of infrastructure, and so on. In such a situation, it is hugely important to be seen as serving the population, in addition to securing it. And that is why we’re conducting counterinsurgency operations, as opposed to merely counterterrorism operations.
For the past several years, as this Army installation in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains became a busy way station for soldiers cycling in and out of Iraq, the number of servicemen implicated in violent crimes has raised alarm.
Nine current or former members of Fort Carson’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team have killed someone or were charged with killings in the last three years after returning from Iraq. Five of the slayings took place last year alone. In addition, charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault have risen sharply.
Prodded by Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, the base commander began an investigation of the soldiers accused of homicide. An Army task force is reviewing their recruitment, medical and service records, as well as their personal histories, to determine if the military could have done something to prevent the violence. The inquiry was recently expanded to include other serious violent crimes.
LOPEZ: What’s your best assessment of “Bush’s legacy” vis-Ã -vis Afghanistan?
YON: That Afghanistan is more akin to Jurassic Park than a modern country is not the fault of President Bush. I sounded the alarm from Afghanistan in 2006 that we were starting to lose the war, but at the time, Iraq was going so poorly that we did not seem to have the assets or attention span for the growing problems in Afghanistan. I would have blamed President Bush if we failed in Iraq, but we are succeeding. Afghanistan will be up to our new president ”” which is fitting enough, since Obama has expressed his opinion that that war is the one we should be fighting. Obama will have the troops at his disposal, and he’s already made a wise decision by asking Secretary Gates to stay on. So we’ll see. But Afghanistan will be Obama’s baby.
LOPEZ: What ought to be Barack Obama’s first priority there?
YON: Firstly, listen very closely to his military advisers, including Generals McKiernan and Petraeus. They don’t put lipstick on the pig, as it were. I see General McKiernan as a realistic commander and a truth-teller. Secretary Gates will tell you that we need more trainers to train the Afghan army and police, and our commanders on the ground will say the same. We need more money for infrastructure and development. We need roads, roads, roads. And more roads. We need to more vigorously address the poppy economy and find alternative livelihoods for the Afghan people. We need to work to not alienate the Afghan people because if we lose the wide approval that we still have, we likely will lose the war.
The war in Iraq has ended. Violent elements remain, but they no longer threaten the very fabric of Iraq. The Iraqi Army, police and government continue to outpace the elements that would prefer to see Iraq in chaos. Iraq is no longer an enemy. There is no reason for us to ever shoot at each other again. But Afghanistan is a different story. I write these words from Kandahar, in the south. This war here is just getting started. Likely we will see severe fighting kicking off by about April of 2009. Iraq is on the mend, but victory in Afghanistan is very much in question.
U.S. deaths in Iraq fell in October to their lowest monthly level of the war, matching the record low of 13 fatalities suffered in July. Iraqi deaths fell to their lowest monthly levels of the year. Eight of the 13 Americans died in combat, most of them in northern Iraq where al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgent groups remain active. The U.S. military suffered 25 deaths in September and 23 in August.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile, 15 U.S. military deaths were reported for October. The monthly toll in that combat theater had been in the 20s since June, when 28 Americans were killed – the worst one-month total since that war began in late 2001.
The sharp drop in American fatalities in Iraq reflects the overall security improvements across the country following the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and the rout suffered by Shiite extremists in fighting last spring in Basra and Baghdad.
This translates into a moment of opportunity for alternative sources ”” but only if it turns out that readers value alternative sources and are willing to keep them afloat during these stormy times. Pajamas Media is an example of an alternative source that is making an impact. PJM reaches millions of people and they sent a video camera to me in Afghanistan. Please stand by for videos of our folks and Afghans telling you directly what they think. Perhaps PJM will host us live from Afghanistan from time to time, and then you can ask soldiers and Afghans what they think and get a live, completely unedited answer.
This is a challenging period: The Afghanistan-Pakistan situation is deteriorating rapidly. Panglossian op-eds, such as this 2006 piece in the Wall Street Journal, would have encouraged investors to toss money into Afghanistan with hopes of high return. For a bit of time travel into coverage from Afghanistan, please read “A Virgin Market.” Afghanistan is neither virgin nor innocent.
But just as my 2006 pieces on Afghanistan explicitly warned that chaos was descending upon the land, I write it here clearly again: during 2009, we likely will see more fighting in Afghanistan than we have experienced to date. Come spring and summer, friendly casualties from all sides will likely be at an all-time high. There is no end in sight. I would not doubt that, given time and barring some extreme unforeseen changes in the situation, the Afghanistan-Pakistan war might well devolve into something far worse than we ever saw in Iraq.